Amadeus Pro 1.4.5 review

We take a look at Amadeus Pro 1.4.5: a multi-track studio that performs very well.

by
Karl Hodge
| 08 Jan 10

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Amadeus Pro 1.4.5 review

Amadeus Pro 1.4.5 presents us with an interesting conundrum. Is free always better? You see, Amadeus Pro is a commercial tool that’s very similar in functionality and looks to a very popular free application, Audacity. They’re both multi-track recording tools, both support VST plug-ins and can output to MP3. Both can be used to analyse sounds, select and edit tracks and make loops.

Amadeus Pro costs $25 (£15) and Audacity 1.2.5 costs nothing. What do you get for your $25? Firstly, stability. While Audacity does many of the same basic things as Amadeus Pro, it has a habit of hanging it the middle of a particularly long recording session – right when you really don’t want to lose your work. It crashed while we were writing this paragraph, for example.

Amadeus Pro is faster and worked without a glitch while we were testing it. It’s also better looking than its open-source rival. Though Audacity has been around for a long time, very little thought seems to have been put into the aesthetics of the interface. Even though Amadeus Pro has similar features, even similar buttons, they come together in a way that seems more professional.

Then there’s integration. Audacity can do MP3 export and support VST plug-ins, but you have to download extensions for those features. A critic of Amadeus Pro might counter that there are no VST plug-ins bundled with the package; that these have to be downloaded separately. That’s a moot point though – VST is there predominantly to provide interoperability with your other tools.

Amadeus has several features you won’t find in Audacity too, including Batch Processing for files and a range of additional sound analysis tools.

OUR VERDICT

Without a doubt, Amadeus Pro 1.4.5 is a better tool than the free competition. Is it $25 better? Our side-by-side tests suggest that it’s worth that and much more.